India and Pakistan have agreed to try to defuse tensions along the Line of Control – the de facto border between the two countries in Kashmir – following nearly three weeks of fighting on both sides of the frontier.
But even as the agreement was announced on Monday, the two countries exchanged fresh fire after an Indian soldier was killed in an overnight militant raid on two Indian military camps.
The national security advisers of India and Pakistan spoke over the phone late on Sunday.
“Both officials stressed on the need to establish contact to reduce tensions along the Line of Control,” said Sartaj Aziz, the foreign affairs adviser to Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif, on Monday.
He added, however, that Pakistan would not yield on its claim over the disputed territory of Kashmir.
“The prime minister had indicated quite clearly that till the issue of Kashmir [is] resolved, tensions across the border would remain,” Mr Aziz said.
Hours after the security advisers spoke, militants armed with guns and grenades attacked two Indian military camps, located in the garrison town of Baramulla on India’s side of the territory.
One soldier died and another was wounded. The militants escaped after a two-hour firefight, according to media reports.
Sunday night's episode was a small-scale version of the September 18 attack by militants upon an Indian army base in the Uri sector of Kashmir. That attack left 19 soldiers dead, sparking a phase of tense friction between the two nuclear-armed countries.
India has long held that such militants are trained and sponsored by Pakistan, and that they infiltrate Indian territory with the support and knowledge of Pakistan’s security forces.
In an apparent response, India announced on Wednesday night that it had carried out "surgical strikes" on terrorist "launch pads", across the Line of Control in Pakistan-held Kashmir. Although Pakistan denied that such an operation took place at all, the strikes raised global fears that they would escalate the fraught situation into full-blown war.
On Friday, United Nations secretary general Ban Ki-moon said he was deeply concerned and called upon both countries to “exercise maximum restraint”.
Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson, Geng Shuang, said the day after the strikes: “We hope that India and Pakistan can enhance communication and properly deal with differences and work jointly to maintain peace and security in the region.”
Prime minister Narendra Modi, who said after the Uri attack that it would not go unpunished, reassured the international community on Sunday that India was not seeking an all-out war.
“This country has never been hungry for land. We have never attacked any other country,” Mr Modi said.
A promise to abate tensions did not necessarily mean drawing down troops from their current positions along the Line of Control, said Sushant Singh, a New Delhi-based defence analyst and a former lieutenant colonel in the Indian Army.
“The two countries will try to reel back the sporadic ceasefire violations that have been happening,” Mr Singh said. “But more than anything else, I think they will try to cut down on the sort of political statements they’ve been making that have been raising the temperature over the last few weeks.”
ssubramanian@thenational.ae
